Walking Heartbreak (25 page)

“The bed is wet now,” she whispers, and I say “yes” because I couldn’t care less. Now, we’re done with the meet-n-greet she made me do, and it’s just us, enjoying our last hours together.

“Let’s not sleep tonight,” I say, hiking her knee over my hips though I’m drained and not ready for another round. I still thrust against her, needing her to remember where I’ve been, where I want to be, where I’d like to be the only man who ever—

Is.

Fuck, okay. This is the high after an amazing show. All performers are like this. Some get drunk off their ass. Some get high. Others have sex until they’re exhausted enough to sleep, while the most wholesome ones work out like Olympians to ease down from the endorphin rush of a great show.

Yes, that’s it. I am that way right now. I’m obsessed with her, and tonight I love her. She’s amazing. Exactly what I—

But all of this aside, once she leaves, once I’m back in the groove, life will be back to normal. My rushes will come from writing songs and performing them. Maybe a quick lay in the bunk with a fan.

I breathe out fast, anchoring myself to reality.

Yes, that’s what it will be. And yet I ask, “You want to see the moon?”

NADIA

We watch the full moon
from the hotel roof. The lights from the city dim the stars surrounding it, but with Bo’s arms around me and my head against his shoulder, I can’t remember seeing a more beautiful moon.

His chest moves with slow intakes and outflows of air while we watch. In a hard stab deep inside me, where he just shook me to Heaven, it strikes me just how alive he is. Bo.
Is a living, breathing man who is obsessed with me.

Tomorrow, I’ll be gone. I can’t stand the thought of leaving him. I don’t want to go back to the life of before. He’ll return, I tell myself, be on break from tour in a week. Beyond that week, beyond his break, I can’t even imagine.

Thoughts keep shivering through my head. I’m the product of my upbringing, my past, my marriage. I’m ruined.

In bed, we fall asleep with our hands stilling on each other’s skin. Cocooned in the air-conditioned room, I’m on his arm, a leg twisted with his under the covers, soft sheets tangling with our limbs and keeping us warm.

“Darling,” he whispers through the pitch-blackness. “I’m so sorry. We have to get up.”

My eyes go wide, my heart hammering out the too-early adrenaline shock I get whenever I wake up at an ungodly hour.

Four. Four a.m. Yes, he’s right. If I am to get on my plane in time, this is it.

I straddle him to get up, but his arms weigh me down, keeping me in his embrace for another sleep-warmed moment. I sigh, nudging in against his throat and savoring the rightness I feel.

“Shower?” he asks, waking up beneath me, allowing silky hardness to prod gently at my core. I’m weak. I’m needy. I widen my legs to feel him one more time because soon I’ll be on a flight speeding far, far away from this man who has woken me from grey slumber.

“We should get up,” he hisses, and I love the heat rasping in his voice, how he has already surrendered and lets himself in even as he speaks.

“Yes…” I say, but what does it matter if I don’t get that shower? Once I’m in L.A., I can take as many showers as I want.

The length of our bodies align in the darkness, the comforter hugging us while Bo’s arms hold me still on top of him. Then he thrusts slowly, coolly, until I envelop him so completely, just the way I want him.

“Why do you trust me like this?” he whispers. “You should be protected.”

“Because you’d never do this to me if I were at risk.”

“Not since my ex have I—”

“And I… not since my husband.”

We’re quiet, undulating with each other until my breath becomes irregular and he ignites his phone and shines it on my face. It’s unromantic, ridiculous.

“What are you doing?” I ask, my question truncated, and he replies—

“Memorizing how your face looks while I love you.”

I have no answer, and once the room returns to black, I already shiver in his arms, his presence overwhelming inside of me. I slow our rhythm, and he adjusts to my need, hard as bone and waiting until I am ready.

A breath as fast as a sob escapes me, and this beautiful person understands. It’s a rush that he understands, and I’ve never felt closer to anyone.

“Now?” he whispers seconds before my climax ripples in, and I do sob then, when he knows things people don’t know.

Pushing my spine down with one hand, he locks the other over my behind to secure himself deep inside of me. He moves in small, barely contained jerks that drive me insane.

“Bo!” I scream, and it’s surreal, weird, wild because I never scream.

Bo whispers, “Yes… Darling…” before he comes apart too.

In the back of a dark cab, he brushes the hair off my face and stares into my eyes while we two-wheel it through back alleys and orange lights. I’m so full of him I don’t have words to share.

“Will you wait for me?” he repeats once the airport appears ahead of us, and I nod because there is no doubt in my mind. I will, I will.

NADIA

The plane heaves me up high,
but it can’t keep my mood from dropping. It doesn’t hold the power to alter my loss and my guilt. A new love corrupts my nerves.

I’m in love with two men, and I can do nothing about it. There is no salvation from the doom coming my way. I’ve escaped my past, my family, but no one can abscond from what’s right and wrong.

My mind is a smogged-down cloud that allows me to doze off when we hit higher altitudes. This new love of mine beats like moth wings against the walls of my heart and refuses to vacate. But in sleep, in sleep, the love invading my dream is my forever:

“Jude,” I shout, shaking him. The bed is rumpled and my sweetheart weak between the sheets, a glass of water the only thing on his nightstand. “Wake up, baby. Have you eaten today?”

Jude has Sundays off from his job at the gas station. He’s the assistant janitor of the Alhambra Apartments too now, which leaves us with minimal utility bills. Today, on his day off, the plan had been to fix the gutters outside.

I don’t know if he has done it, and I don’t care, because I’m just home from my eight-hour shift at Scott’s Diner, and here I am, finding this.

“Jude!”

He stirs. He’s paler than our cream-colored sheets. “Nadia. I’m fine—just resting.” He sounds trustworthy, but it’s the fourth time in eight weeks that I’ve found him like this.

“Did you finish the gutters?” I say, and he smirks, eyes still closed. “I don’t leave a job until it’s done.”

My pulse settles at his attitude, knowing he’s right. “When did you eat last?”

“Women,” he says. “I thought I’d finally moved out of
Mom’s
domain. I’m fine, Nadia. You don’t have to keep an eye on me. I’m good.”

“Tell me,” I insist. “When?”

I recognize the signs. He’s feeble and opinionated. Wants to be left alone. When he’s okay, Jude always wants me close. He greets me at the door when we work shifts that don’t match. Sometimes, he lights the candles I love so much, the ones that smell like peaches and lemons. He waits for me with some sort of foody concoction neither of us enjoy much, but the main thing is, he makes it. Like I do for him when he’s the one coming home late. Tonight, there’s no food on the stove.

“I had breakfast with you.”

“Jude. That was nine hours ago. And you’ve worked after?”

“Nadia.” His voice is stern despite the slumped posture on the bed. “I. Just. Need. To rest.”

My next question is a make or break. “Did you take an insulin shot any time after breakfast?”

He blows air out between lips that are unnaturally pale. “Of course. I never miss an insulin shot.”

My point exactly.

I don’t say anything else. I just hit up his supply of glucagon. I consider if I should take a chance on pills or go straight to the shots. He registers my rummaging in the nightstand and says, “Don’t work yourself up, babe. The gutters just worked me over is all.” He sounds like he knows what he’s talking about—that he’s in control of his bodily reactions, but I know better. Right now he isn’t.

“Pills or syringe,” I say though I know I’ll have to decide.

“So insistent,” he sighs. “You’re wearing me out.”

“Shot then,” I say and pull the syringe full from the ampule it’s wrapped with.

“A pill would work,” he breathes, already weaker. Fear for him makes me tremble, and I need to give this shot to him before my hands start shaking.

He groans when I empty the syringe into his arm. I’m lucky—I’ve been lucky both times I’ve had to do this over the last three months. I’ve read up on how to inject it, but I’m not a nurse and will never be one. It’s a miracle no air bubbles slip in with the injection. That would be dangerous, I think… God is good and with us even though we’re bad apples disobeying our parents.

The miracle of glucagon might never stop surprising me. Minutes later, my husband’s skin tone morphs from ghostly to his natural, golden hue. An apologetic smile stretches across his face, replacing the rigid denial painting it before. “Nadia. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Your mother told me,” I say again, just like I have before. “You’re reckless with your medicine. That’s why she didn’t want you to leave Payne Point.”

“Yeah. Well, it doesn’t matter. I had to get you out of there, and she finally gets that,” he says firmly.

“Sure, but it doesn’t change that you need to keep an eye on yourself. You’re an adult. You have to understand how dangerous it is for you not to eat. I won’t always be here when you forget.”

“Hey, I take the insulin shots.”

“As you should, but even if you’re in a hurry—have some sort of protein. Boil an egg,” I beg.

“Yeah, yeah, bossy lady. Come here,” he whispers.

I can’t stay mad at him. I am stubborn when it comes to his health though. “Not until you eat. I’m making hot dogs, and I want you to eat at least three,” I say.

He chuckles low in his throat, the way he does sometimes when I crave him in the way of wives. “Okay. I owe you three hot dogs. Then afterward,” he starts, lifting to his elbows on the mattress and letting his gaze skim over my body. “Afterward, ‘I will give her her vineyards from thence, and the valley of Achor for a door of hope: and she shall sing there—’ I will make her sing.”

Despite myself, I snicker. My Jude and his proverbs. “You’re so silly. First you’ll eat. And then you’ll make me…
sing
?”

“At least sigh happily when I—”

“Ugh, stop.”

“Why? You’re my wife. I can tell my wife what I plan to do to her. I want to—”

I jerk awake at the abrupt scratching from the speakers above me. “
Ladies and gentlemen. As we start our descent, please make sure your seat backs and tray tables are in their full, upright position. Make sure your…”

Jude, I’m almost home.

NADIA

“Because you’re depressed!”
Zoe yells. “That’s why you want to sleep nonstop. I remember that from right after the ceremony too. You went into hibernation and didn’t want to come back out again. It was me and… what’s-her-face? We took turns sitting with you to make sure you always had a friend with you. We didn’t even go home to sleep. We camped out on your couch, remember?”

“Of course,” I say from within my sheets and comforters.

It’s the second day home from Bo’s tour, and I hate the way I feel. I go to work and do my thing there, because I’m a master at blocking stuff out. But all I want is to sink under my covers with Jude’s pillow at my nose and work hard to forget the rest.

Like how right everything felt while I was with Bo. How happy I was. His response to me while I was there with him. The way he looked at me.

Like how I miss him.

I peek out from the covers, my stare landing on a photo of Jude and me on the nightstand. Zoe took it at the boardwalk, right after we came off the rollercoaster for the first time. I loved it. My first time on a rollercoaster ever. I’m wearing a wobbly smile courtesy of motion sickness. Jude’s fingers dig into my hips, barely keeping me on my feet. And his face is alight with humor.

So amazing together.

Zoe flips the photo over. “Enough. Get up. You’ve avoided me for two days at work, and I’m not taking any more of your bullshit. I want to hear about the tour. Emil told me that Bo totally freaked out when Elias mentioned you going home—”

“That was mean,” I mumble. “And don’t mention
him
in our apartment.”

“—but I want to hear it from my friend. You need to tell me what’s going on. Why are you regressing right now, just being a nightmare all over again? We’re not doing this, you know. That time is over.” She folds the comforter neatly to the side and plops a stack of clothes next to me.

“We’re going out. Maybe a movie. We’ll have drinks and talk. That old-fashioned cocktail lounge on Craig’s Street will do.”

So the tears start seeping again, and it’s different this time. I’ve tried to block out reality, but reality is in my face, gritting teeth and showing fangs. What would remain of me if I faced it? Wouldn’t it be my demise?

She doesn’t comment on the tears. Just hands me the pieces of clothing one by one and watches me get dressed. In the living room I stop again. Sink to my knees in front of the coffee table and look into Jude’s eyes. I blow out the candles he won’t tend to while I’m gone. Rearrange the tiny cactus pots around the bigger one with white birds on it.

“Bye, Jude,” Zoe says, lifting her hand in a wave at him. She pulls me to my feet and keeps me steady over the threshold. I turn and look again, and for a fraction of a second, I want to die so bad it’s like a gunshot to my stomach. I can’t do this. I can’t move on from our love—the beauty of that one person that used to make me whole.

“He completes me,” I say brokenly in the car.

“No,” Zoe says, steadfast. “He
completed
you. He doesn’t anymore. Now, someone else seems to complete you, and it’s time you open to the present, sweetie. Take it in. Understand.”

I have a blue martini in front of me when Bo calls. I don’t hesitate. I pick up on the first ring. “Hey,” he says, alive and intimate, so close on my ear. Zoe winks. Gives me the thumbs-up like I’m doing something huge by answering my phone.

I guess she’s right. I haven’t been good at picking up lately.

“Are you okay? Is everything okay?”

“Yeah. Thanks, I’m good,” I answer mechanically.

“You don’t sound good.”

That brings the lump back to my throat, and I swallow, trying to get in charge of my voice. “Nadia, darling. Did I do something?”

You broke through.

“No, you did nothing bad. I had a great time on tour with you.”

I laughed. Ah I laughed out there with him. The way he looked when he barged off the stage to grab me after the shows? Jittery fun-bubbles fizzed in my throat. Those shows, his energy on stage, God. God.

“How’s… Jude?” He finally says my husband’s name.

“What do you want me to say? ‘Good?’” I quip because I can’t answer that.

Bo is quiet, probably mulling over my retort. It wasn’t nice of me. I’m adding to my stack of wrongdoings. Another little brick of badness.

“I’ll be home around noon on Friday,” he breathes into the phone, and something happens to my body. It remembers that sound. “Are you working then?”

“Yeah, I’m off at five,” I say.

“Okay. Can you… get away afterward?” he asks carefully, not mentioning Jude a second time.

“I can.”

Zoe whoops behind her hand and dances a little on her seat, clearly guessing the conversation.

“Give me your address, and I’ll pick you up, say, at seven?”

My heart drops. Pick me up… as in from the apartment? He can’t come to our apartment! No. Of course, that’s not what he’s suggesting.

“Hold on,” I say and cover the phone with my hand. “Zoe, you haven’t told him about Jude, right?” I stare deep into her eyes to keep her from lying.

She lifts her hands high, fingers spread. “No. I don’t break promises. I’m totally against how you’re handling this—you’re making it way worse for yourself—but I love you and you’re the one who needs to figure stuff out.”

“He wants to come and pick me up at the apartment!” As the explanation falls from me, dread sinks to where heat pooled in me a moment ago.

“And? It’s a natural thing. Just, you need to clean up in there. You can’t have it the way it is or you’ll freak him out.”

“No. Our apartment stays the way it is.”

“Then you need to
explain
before you let Bo in.”

“He just can’t come in.”

“Girl. Enough already. Just. Tell. Him. Everything.”

I stare at her for a long moment while Bo’s voice buzzes from the speaker and into my hand. “Nadia. Are you there?”

“Yeah,” I finally say, and I’m tired, so tired again. I don’t know what to do.

“Hey, it’s Zoe!” Zoe says loud and clear into the phone. It’s gone from my hand, in hers now. I scramble to retrieve it, but she turns her back to me and rattles my address off into the phone. Then she strides toward the restrooms, and I lunge after her, desperate, only it’s too late. Zoe, my awful friend, slams the door and locks it from the inside, while I stand outside with my hand over my mouth.